Many businesses today have offices in more than one location. For example, a large corporation may have its corporate headquarters in New York, manufacturing facilities in Virginia and research and development laboratories in California. As a result, a businesses' employees may be spread out as well. Many businesses have purchased equipment and associated software referred to as “call centers” or (“contact centers”). Generally speaking, a call center is used to distribute incoming “calls (hereafter the word “call” or “calls” is used to indicate any number of incoming communications or communication types, such as voice calls, voice mail, facsimile, voice-over-IP, emails, instant messages, Internet-based web chats, collaborative Internet sessions, or any other type of incoming communication that can be handled by a customer service representative or the like) to a business' employees. Call centers have become more sophisticated over the years. Today, some call centers have the ability to route an incoming call to an employee who has a specialized skill or expertise in order to answer/satisfy the specialized questions/needs of incoming callers.
A business may have more than one call center linked together. For example, each such “multi-site” call center might be responsible for distributing calls to a particular subset of employees who have specific skills or expertise. An advantage of having a linked arrangement of call centers is that when an incoming call is received by one call center, and this “original” call center determines that the available employees (referred to as “agents”) connected to it do not have the requisite skills or expertise to meet the needs of the incoming call in a timely fashion, the original call center can route the call to an “alternative” call center that is capable of promptly directing the call to a qualified, available agent. In general, it is preferable to place incoming calls into a “queue” associated with a center which has a short wait time, rather than a long wait time, in order to enhance customer satisfaction and reduce the chance that callers will hang up before an agent answers the call.
When caller wait time is the chief concern, many conventional call centers use techniques that change how work is handled in order to reduce wait time. For example, in some cases calls are moved from one “queue” to another, where wait times are expected to be shorter or where agents are available to take the call immediately. The agent that services such a “re-queued” caller, however, is typically not the first choice in agent type (i.e., does not have the ideal abilities or specialized knowledge needed to answer a caller's question), and, therefore, may provide a service which is less efficient, less effective, or costs more than an agent who is more ideally suited to service this type of call.
The criteria to determine whether a call should be routed to another call center and/or which call center, among many, should be the target of the routed call, vary. Increasingly, some businesses want to use a criterion called “Match Rate”. So it is clear, many techniques for routing calls can involve a transaction in which one value or criteria is matched with another. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,903 to Kohler, et. al assigned to the same assignee herein. It should be emphasized, however, that as used herein, the term “Match Rate” has a different and more specialized meaning. Specifically, as used herein, the term Match Rate should be understood as a cumulative measurement (i.e., a “running tally”), instead of a successful “match” of caller or call to agent. More specifically, the Match Rate to which the present invention is directed is a measurement of what percentage of calls needing a particular skill or expertise set are answered by agents who are ideally suited to serve the contact, rather than by agents who are less than ideally suited to do so.
Some existing techniques route calls to agents based on a set of skills. Others are capable of selecting a queue with the shortest wait time served by qualified agents from among many queues in order to minimize wait times. The latter techniques are sometimes referred to as “load balancing” techniques.
To date, however, the inventors are not aware of a technique which allows calls to be balanced based on a combination of wait times and a Match Rate.
Accordingly, it is a desire of the present invention to provide for methods and devices for balancing calls, such as incoming calls, based on a Match Rate and wait times.
It is a further desire of the present invention to balance calls based on a Match Rate and wait times which is associated with a particular set of skills or expertise.
Further desires will become apparent from the drawings, detailed description of the invention and claims which follow.